I don't like how that looks when lowercase. Yet all caps looks odd too. They should rename it. Moving on...

After recovering my password, a process that was not aided by my having forgotten my secret question answer, I was able to play Rift again. It's about what I remember: a newer version of WoW. That may or may not be a good thing. For me, it was a good thing. While GW2 was fun, I couldn't get into the action playstyle. I prefer either a lot of abilities and not much movement or not many abilities and a lot of movement. Having many abilities and a lot of movement just ended up being confusing and overwhelming for me. From that perspective, a game that is just a new version of WoW is great.

After just a few days I wouldn't say I'm comfortable yet. In part, I think it's a matter of visual perception. I'm used to how WoW looks when doing anything MMOish, so something different is inevitably slightly disorienting. Rift seems to have a lot more dark areas, death rifts at night. I'll have to figure out something so I can see health bars, or at least names, of enemies that I'm not currently targeting. Yea, basic UI stuff is still messing me up.

Yet I was comfortable enough to try a dungeon. I had some quests for Iron Tomb, so I did a random because I wasn't sure if there was a way to pick it. Either due to luck or lack of selection at that level, I got it. I explained that I was new and so people should feel free to yell at me. Then we stood there buffing. Then we stood there standing. Someone said go. I went. I kept going until people told me to do things like not attack the death shard. Good thing I was doing small pulls; if I had been more confident I'd have run up to it and dragged in even more mobs.

Everything went smoothly, beside the somewhat clueless tank. A few of the group members chatted about roles. Someone said go. We killed bosses and rolled greed on the useless plate armor. Stupid warriors clogging my loot tables. We killed the last boss, the person who said go said that the tanking and healing was good. I asked about the missing death shard. We killed it. I died because I'd wisely decided that having my self heal more easily accessible than my casted holy bolt was a good idea, and then unwisely didn't relearn the keys.

At some point I'll look for a guide of some sort. In the meantime, I'll keep wandering around, doing quests, closing rifts, and wondering what else I'm doing wrong.

All in all, a fun experience so far. If this keeps up I might even spend money.

1 comments:

I thought The Old Republic was a much better WoW clone than Rift. Though if Rift has fixed its incredibly laggy interface [from when I played at, um, launch...] that would probably close the gap a bunch.